Origin

Italian pasta still retains a sophistication that the humble British pasty does not have, yet pasta (late 19th century), pasty (Middle English), and paste all go back through Latin to Greek pastai ‘barley porridge’ from pastos ‘to sprinkle, to salt’. The earliest use of paste in English was to mean ‘pastry’; pastry took over the sense in the 15th century. The sense ‘glue’ emerged in the later Middle Ages from the use of flour and water as an adhesive. Other words from the same root are pastel (mid 17th century); patty (mid 17th century); and the French equivalent paté (mid 18th century). Italian developed the form pasticcio for ‘pie’, which was also used as a term for a ‘hotchpotch, mixture’ and came into English via French as pastiche in the late 19th century. Pastrami (early 20th century) may be a more distant relative.

adjective (pastier, pastiest)

Now and again some workman would stop to light his pipe, but the others tramped on round him with never a smile, never a word to a mate, pasty faces all turned towards Paris, which swallowed them one by one…

Derivatives

pastiness

I sit in a cubicle lit by fluorescent bulbs that highlight the pastiness of my complexion, and the article about building an ice-skating pond where there once stood a dump made me wonder what value I get out of sitting like this.

And I have to start looking good too, as my latest crush wont be turned on by pastiness.

In addition to its thickening ability and tendency to prevent ‘wheying off’ or syneresis in yogurt, this organic starch is bland and permits natural flavors in the food to burst through without any masking or pastiness on the palate.